D (2:39)

What is cryptocurrency? Yeah, this is a fun question. Cause I can answer it about a million different ways. I would say it's largely a get rich quick scheme wrapped in a sort of technobabble alternative history of money idea that you could have a sort of libertarian esque, anarcho capitalist utopia where everyone had their own money that they could send directly to one another and avoid the horrors of our regulated system. But it's just a fantasy. Crypto, bitcoin and crypto have never really worked as money except as a sort of a black market form of money, a thing of value that you could. A thing that you could exchange in exchange for criminal activity. Buying drugs was the first use case for crypto and it's gotten worse since then, but it's never really functioned as a scalable money.

B (3:38)

Yeah. One of the funniest parts of your documentary, and you do this a couple of times, you do this at a bitcoin conference, you do this in El Salvador, is that you keep trying to buy things with bitcoin and no one will take it. So if you can't use cryptocurrency to buy anything and a bunch of people have lost money on it when they use it as an investment vehicle, who is it for?

D (4:02)

The true believers, the people that believe that it's gonna keep going up no matter what. And I mean, look, in their defense, over time it has gone up. It was worthless when it first came out, and then it found this use case on the Silk Road, which was a dark web drug marketplace and people could buy drugs with it, then the Silk Road was shut down and it floundered. And we now know from the Epstein files that Jeffrey Epstein helped swoop in and save the day by funding Bitcoin Core development, which is the group of developers that maintain bitcoin's operating system. So Jeffrey Epstein helped keep it going. And it's transformed into the situation where you have sort of the retail public basically betting that crypto, the price of Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of these other 20,000 cryptocurrencies is going to go up or down. So they're sort of gambling. And then you have the other side of the ledger, which is criminal activity, which is basically some of the worst people in the world getting paid for their crimes via crypto. Like Russian oligarchs sending sanctioned oil to the Chinese in exchange for drones they send to Ukraine for funding isis. North Korean hacking teams that steal crypto have funded half of the North Korean nuclear weapons program. So there's gambling on one side and then there's. There's crime on the other.

B (5:20)

During Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, he said he'd make the US the quote, crypto capital of the planet. And he was super into it. We're now more than a year into his second term and things don't seem to be going so well. Has Trump helped or hurt the crypto industry with his allegedly crypto friendly policies? I was just actually on the crypto industry Reddit board and so I was saying that, like, basically, Trump has ruined cryptocurrency and it's time for us to admit it.

D (5:49)

I mean, I appreciate that if that's even at all sincere, but he has helped it enormously. Crypto, you know, the film that I, that I've made. Most of the events take place in 2022 when crypto crashed the last time, and after that the market crashed, a bunch of people went to jail and it was floundering. The price of bitcoin was back to where it was in 2018 or something. And then Trump started embracing it in the summer of 24 as he was running for reelection, having called bitcoin a scam as recently as 2021. But he saw an angle, whether to profit for himself and or to appeal to a certain group of young men who potentially persuadable and people, quite frankly, rationally did the calculation of, look, he's got a 50, 50 chance to be president again. If he is, he can do a lot to boost the price, so why not bet on that? The price started going up and it went all the way up to like $120,000 of Bitcoin. It's now back into the 70 or $80,000 range. But he's really done an enormous amount. He's gutted. They've gutted the SEC, they've disbanded the DOJ's crypto crime task force that have been set up under the bide. They've passed a terrible piece of legislation called the Genius act, which allows corporations to issue their own money in the form of stablecoins, these cryptocurrencies that are pegged one to one against a real currency like the US Dollar. So literal corporate money has been signed into law, which 100 Democrats voted for, which is quite exciting for those of us who believe that perhaps the Democratic Party should focus on people and not corporations. Hakeem Jeffries voted for this bill. My congressman, Dan Gold, voted for this bill, which is why I'm supporting his opponent, Brad Lander. So Trump has done an incredible job of getting crypto, sort of raising the price overall, getting it further into our regulated system. And has benefited, of course, enormously, personally. He and his family have benefited to the tune of billions of dollars, real dollars, via cryptocurrency, even though his meme coin is down like 96%. So basically they won and everybody else lost. Um, so to hear people complain about that in the crypto, quote, unquote community, my polite response is, where Were you in 2024? Were you saying this then, or were you just cheering it on the way up? My guess is that most of them were cheering it on the way up. Now they pretend to be aghast. Trump is not like a violation of the purity of the crypto community. He's a confirmation of the corruption within it and the intellectually incompatible ideas within cryptocurrency. The idea that you could have this decentralized, democratized form of money that isn't democratized or decentralized and is, in fact, an insider's game. Trump just confirms to me and other skeptics what crypto has always been, which is a hustle.

B (8:53)

But wouldn't that be bad for cryptocurrency? Because I just keep thinking about how, let's say, hopefully, Democrats take Congress in the midterms, Democrats take the White House in 2028. I would think that the. One of the first things Democrats would want to do is go after cryptocurrency to, you know, bring in Lina Khan, to just be like, we're going to regulate the shit out of this. So by making cryptocurrency and inherently, to me, MAGA enterprise and making it something that's anathema to progressives, liberals, a lot of people. Wouldn't you kind of shoot yourself in the foot for the future, maybe?

D (9:29)

I mean, in the short term, you're making an enormous amount of money. The crypto companies are making billions of dollars. Donald Trump himself, his family, making billions of dollars as well. So there's an extraordinary amount of money to be made in the short term. And then, to be honest, my guess is the calculation from their side moving forward is to do what they've already been, quite frankly, fairly successful at, which is buying off the democr or elected leaders in the Democratic Party by funneling enormous amounts of money into their campaigns or against them to defeat Them and sort of basically believing that at the end of the day, the leaders in the party, the Democratic Party, are going to be such wimps that they're not actually going to go after this obvious corruption, that they're ultimately going to side with the industry for fear that it will dump an enormous amount of money on their heads in their reelection cycles. To give you a sense of how much money we're talking about, it was 240/something million dollars in 2024 alone. 240 million dollars. The crypto industry and people that are behind it spent in the 2024 cycle. That is 40 something percent of all corporate donations in the cycle, nearly half. It is a staggering amount of money. And they use it both as a carrot and a stick. If you vote for the policies they like, they will potentially lend you money, give you money for your campaign, and if you don't, they will spend it against you.

B (10:58)

Given all of this, where do you see cryptocurrency going in the next five years?

D (11:02)

Well, it doesn't seem like it's going to go very well until Trump's out of office. To state the obvious, I don't think he would. Even if there was responsible legislation on the Hill, which, by the way, there is not. And it's sort of. I mean, there's even worse legislation pending in both the Senate Banking Committee and the Agriculture Committee. The Ag Committee oversees the cftc, which is the Commodities Future Trading Commission, which is the weaker, smaller regulatory agency that crypto really wants to be regulated by. So there's a thing called the Clarity act in the Banking Committee that would help put crypto under the cftc. And then there's another bill in the Ag Committee that would define all the rules. And you have people like Senator Cory Booker is potentially charged with making this bill work in the Ag Committee. I've been trying to reach out to the Senator, but I'm pretty disappointed in his pro crypto stance, particularly given, you know, who he is, what his background is. The community that represents crypto is really preys on all sorts of people, but certainly people that feel like they've been locked out of the American dream and tells them, oh, there's a better way forward with crypto. But if you actually look at the stats, most of those people are going to lose. And so it's really disappointing that Senator Booker seems to be trying to shepherd this bill through Congress.

B (12:28)

Ben, thank you so much for joining me.

D (12:31)

Thank you.

B (12:32)

That was my conversation with Ben McKenzie, Director of Everyone Is Lying to youo for Money. We'll put the link in the show. Notes you don't need to own any Bitcoin to listen to Whataday or even to be the host of what a Day. So if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a Day is brought to you by Oriframes I take tons of photos pretty much every day. My dog is cute, the sky is beautiful, and dang it, I want to keep those memories. And I can share them too on my Aura frame. With auraframes you can share your photos and videos effortlessly. Download the free Aura app or text photos straight to your frame. Auraframes the easiest way to share memories Named number one by Wirecutter. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $25 off their bestselling Carver Mat frame with code WAD. That's a U R A frames.com promo code WAD. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Willy's Remedy is the perfect post work beverage that helps you relax without any of alcohol's unpleasant side effects. Willy's is a premium THC infused social tonic crafted by the legendary Willie Nelson. It is a low calorie, low sugar alcohol alternative that actually works, delivering a fast acting, euphoric social buzz without the regrets that come with alcohol. Willy's social tonics come in 5 milligram and 10 milligram doses with a best in class flavor experience so smooth and balanced you barely realize you're drinking a THC product at all. You can enjoy the tonics as a shot, sipped over ice or mixed into your favorite mocktail. One shot of Willy's helps you relax, unwind and de stress. Perfect for taking the edge off at the end of a long day or socializing with friends, Willy's offers the kind of feeling that makes good company even better. Willy's sold out three times in the first six months with over 50,000 happy customers and they just restocked. Willy's ships directly to your doorstep in 40/states. Order now@drinkwillys.com and use code WAD for 20% off of your first order and free shipping on orders over $95. And enjoy life in the high country. Here's what else we're following today. Head of Lines Joining me is Crooked's News Editor Greg Walters to talk about the big stories. Hey Greg.

E (14:52)

Hey Jane.

B (14:54)

Greg it feels like at least once a day the Trump administration tells us America has won the war in Iran and that it just needs to keep on winning a little bit more. Here's Trump on Newsmax last week.

C (15:07)

We've already won, but I want to win by a bigger margin. But we have, we already, we have destroyed their navy, destroyed their air force, destroyed all of their, if you look at their anti aircraft equipment, their radar equipment, their leadership, their leadership is destroyed. We've destroyed everything. If we leave right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild, if they ever could rebuild. And, but it's not, it's actually not good enough.

B (15:38)

I do believe we've destroyed everything. But I don't know, Greg, somehow I think that maybe, just maybe the Trump administration isn't giving us the full story.

E (15:47)

Well, Jane, according to a fresh report in the Washington Post, you're right to wonder. The headline here is Iran has hit far more US Assets than reported. And they're citing an analysis of satellite imagery that shows Iranian airstrikes hit at least 228 targets at US military locations since the war began. So that's barracks, hangars, fuel depots, radar equipment.

B (16:12)

It's so weird that former Fox and Friends weekend host Pete Hegseth hasn't mentioned any of this. I mean, Trump keeps telling us his conflict is basically over. Almost over. Iran wants to make a deal. We've blown up all their stuff.

E (16:26)

Yeah. And yet here we are. Despite all the happy talk. There are still over 20,000 sailors on more than 1500 commercial ships stuck behind the Strait of Hormuz. And the national average price of gasoline just blew past $4.50 per gallon nationwide.

B (16:41)

And meanwhile, Trump and Secretary of War slash little boy Pete Hegseth want you to think that any bad news is a hallucination or a symptom of your raging Trump derangement syndrome. Or as deputy assistant to the president and noted weird person Sebastian Gorka put it on Wednesday to the Daily Caller. Anyone who opposes this war is, quote, testicularly challenged.

E (17:04)

Yeah, that was an unfortunate turn of phrase. Look, at this point, Trump is fighting two wars, one against Iran and one against reality.

B (17:14)

Speaking of things people would rather not talk about, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick finally appeared before the House Oversight Committee to talk about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. And his performance is getting, how to put this? Poor reviews. Here's California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna speaking to reporters after the hearing.

F (17:30)

Know why that interview was not videotaped? If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Lutnick, it was really embarrassing. He was asked very straightforward questions about whether he regretted misleading the American people. I mean, he said that he would never see Epstein again in 2005. And everyone knows that he took his wife and kids to see Epstein in 2012. And yet it was just contortions and lies and no acknowledgement that he misled the American public. And if you saw the exchange of that my colleagues had with him, you would see he made a farce of the English language.

B (18:19)

Yeah, let me just back up for a second. So, as Khanna said, Lutnick did say he had not been in a room with Jeffrey Epstein after 2005 because he thought Epstein was a, quote, disgusting person. Fact check. True. But the big batch of files released by the Department of Justice showed Howard Lutnick was maybe not telling the truth.

E (18:40)

Right. Including the time Lutnick had lunch with his family on Epstein's private island. You know, I can remember personally all the times I had lunch on a private island. Zero. But it's the kind of thing that perhaps tends to slip one's memory.

B (18:56)

Yeah. Like the time Lutnick and Jeffrey Epstein went into business together when they invested in the same firm in 2014. They were emailing about it as late as 2018. And House Democrats noted on Wednesday that Lutnick just could not remember why he was at Epstein's island. Actually, Greg, according to the New York Times, Lutnick's name appeared in more than 250 documents in the Epstein files.

E (19:18)

Weird. In any case, we've seen a big wave of accountability around the Epstein files in foreign countries, including royalty and top officials losing jobs or titles, but not so much in this country. Unfortunately for Donald Trump, however, this controversy is not going away anytime soon. However, Jane, speaking of things that are going away, Stephen Colbert's time doing late night TV is coming to an end at the end of this month.

B (19:44)

Yeah. He's ending a long and epic run. And there are a lot of questions about what he'll do next. And he recently raised that topic with former President Barack Obama.

A (19:53)

I'm looking for a new gig soon. Uh huh. And a lot of people tell me I should run for president. Well, you certainly have the look. Thank you very much. You have the hair. Well, for the record, I think it's a stupid idea. How dumb, how dumb do you think it is for people to say that I should run for president? Well, you know, the bar has changed. That is true at times. Subterranean. So I don't have to limbo so low. They put it this way, I think that you could perform significantly better than some folks that we've seen.

C (20:29)

Right?

B (20:29)

Yeah,

A (20:31)

I have great confidence in that. Thank you very much. Is that an endorsement? It was not.

B (20:37)

Funnily enough, Colbert has technically run for president before. Sort of. Back in 2007, Stephen Colbert tried to run for president as both a Democrat and a Republican as a bit. He even tried to get on the ballot as a Democrat in South Carolina. And according to cnn, it was supporters of the Obama campaign that helped keep him off the ballot. The Obama campaign denied at the time having any involvement.

E (21:00)

So Colbert 2028. Let's see what the WOD listeners think in the comments, because that's where we are.

B (21:07)

Greg, one of my favorite things about you is that I know you will never run for president, so I don't even have to worry about endorsing you. But I would. I would endorse you for president.

E (21:18)

Greg, I have no plans to run for president.

B (21:22)

Jane, that's probably for the best. Thanks, Greg.

E (21:27)

Definitely is.

B (21:28)

And that's the news. Before we go Jane Fonda and Stacey Abrams have committed their careers to bold political advocacy and voting rights. In this week's episode of Assembly Required, Stacey provides guidance on how we move forward after the Supreme Court reversed 60 years of progress by weakening the Voting Rights Act. Stacey answers listeners questions and talks to Fonda about where we go from here. Tune into Assembly Required every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. You could buy the house from Scarface and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just about how for a cool $237 million, you could own a home with a saltwater pool and a glass elevator, featured in the 1983 film A Lot of people apparently never finished like me, what a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe@cricut.com subscribe I'm Jane Coston, and the home also has five bedrooms and seven full bathrooms alongside two powder rooms, which confirms my belief that every home should have more bathrooms than bedrooms. Water Day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily Foer, Erica Morrison, and Adrienne Hill. Our team includes Hailey Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Kantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.